Thursday, May 3, 2007

With this week's visit to the "colonies" by England's Queen Elizabeth, its worth noting the population control beliefs held by her husband, Prince Philip. In his forward to the book "If I were an Animal" the Prince wrote,

"I just wonder what it would be like to be reincarnated in an animal whose species had been so reduced in numbers than it was in danger of extinction. What would be its feelings toward the human species whose population explosion had denied it somewhere to exist.... I must confess that I am tempted to ask for reincarnation as a particularly deadly virus."

"I don't claim to have any special interest in natural history, but as a boy I was made aware of the annual fluctuations in the number of game animals and the need to adjust the ``cull'' to the size of the surplus population."

And if that weren't enough to make your head spin, from the same book,

"What has been described as the ``balance of nature'' is simply nature's system of self-limitation. Fertility and breeding success create the surpluses after allowing for the replacement of the losses. Predation, climatic variation, disease, starvation--and in the case of the inappropriately named Homo sapiens, wars and terrorism--are the principal means by which population numbers are kept under some sort of control."

With the Prince's beliefs in mind it is worth noting that the Royals trip to Virginia will also include a private audience with the Queen and the families of the victims of the VaTech massacre. It makes you wonder what the Prince thinks of Cho's "culling" at the school.